


know something's starting right now

by earlofcardigans



Category: The Little Mermaid (1989)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-27
Updated: 2013-11-27
Packaged: 2018-01-02 19:48:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1060874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlofcardigans/pseuds/earlofcardigans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ariel finds a cave.</p>
<p>Happy Yuletide, sweetcarolanne!</p>
            </blockquote>





	know something's starting right now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetcarolanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcarolanne/gifts).



Ariel had carved out a tiny space in a large cave just for herself. She went there constantly to escape. Her sisters made fun of her, of course, because what does a guppy have to escape from?

They had no idea how crazy they were, flashing tails and throwing barnacles, and while she loved it most days… Days like today made her just want to sit in her cave and breathe some fresh water.

The only reason she found this particular cave was because she was chasing a stingray that was chasing a pretty blue and yellow fish, and it was mostly hilarious and she wanted to make sure the fish was okay. Not that the stingray looked like it was out to hurt the tiny fish or anything. Ariel just liked making sure the creatures in her father’s kingdom were safe and happy.

She knew, of course, that her father took care of most of that, and she also knew she was young (and according to almost every fish related to her, a bit flighty), but she wanted to be a good representation of her family.

Their tails held most of the history of their water. Well not Ariel’s. She had no scars yet. She didn’t have any memory of her mother, so there was not any way that would have scarred enough to change her scales.

She didn’t want to change her scales either. But she did just want to lie somewhere no one else had set a fin.

She went through her cave rock by rock and discovered an anemone without a clownfish family. They talked for a while about relocation and if Ariel could help, maybe find a clownfish that needed a new start. They hadn’t come to any conclusions though, and Ariel was fine to leave him to his patch of algae. She didn’t want to disturb any fish that wanted to be happy in her cave as well.

She had noticed when she first swam in the opening on the seafloor, that there was light. Not much but she wanted to trace it. They spent so much time in the palace depths that she never got enough of the light. Her tail shone in the light. Her hair craved it sometimes. She watched the family of seahorses swim in a cone up toward the light, in and out of the flicker, and look like they were disappearing with the tiny waves.

Ariel laughed as she followed them toward the middle of the cave.

They were joined by a school of tiny fish that she hadn’t seen that far down in a long time. They were practically iridescent in the dying light, and Ariel ran her hand through them to watch them part and come back together. They swam under her hair and arm and around her head and she turned with them in a dizzying circle and watched them dart back out through the opening and toward their middle sea.

She had to move some rocks and make sure nothing fell slowly or landed on the floor on top of any fish before she even got close to the small opening at the top. The cave was tiered and reached toward the sun like it also wanted out of the sea and to be alone.

It was a tight squeeze at first, but Ariel managed to get her face in the open water and up towards the light. It was almost as if the setting sun was just hers in these moments.

She could ignore the dolphins chattering and jumping off to her left and watch the light with slit eyes. Even if it was going away for the night, the sun was still so bright, reflected off the water and the coral.

She flipped around slowly and raised her fin to the sun. Her scales turned a burnished turquoise that no amount of sanding with her sisters in their salon would ever get them.

Nothing compared to the light.

She flipped herself back around and before she was upright, her eyes caught on something that was shinier than her tail. It glinted brightly every time the waves moved the kelp it was stuck in.

She swam back down and carefully extricated it from the weeds.

Ariel wiped the surface with her thumb and watched the bubbles rise and pop around her found object.

She had no idea what it was. It looked open and she pushed her thumb against the swirling pattern to shut it but it bounced back at her. She had no way of knowing if that was how it worked or it if were broken. It was on a long silver chain that slipped through her fingers when she wound it around them to stop it gently floating on the waves. It had a crack through the middle and something that looked like numbers but she couldn’t read them.

She closed her fist around it and bobbed the chain around the water in front of her just to watch it catch the dying light again.

There were times before when she found human relics they let go of into the sea. Ariel had never been sure if the humans let go of their possessions on purpose just to watch them float on the frothy surfaces until they could no longer see them because they didn’t want them anymore or because they were as drawn to the sea as she was to the sandbars she watched the crabs crawl onto.

She was never sure if the humans were this careless with their belongings. And if they were, what else were they careless with? Her father had told her all the stories of his youth that were meant to scare her away from ever trying to leave his sea kingdom. Ariel had told no one but the cave walls how much she wanted to prove some of her father’s stories wrong.

Besides, her sisters had told her equally scary tales of sea witches and hurtful fish right in their back weeds.

Ariel sat on the floor of the cave and carved a small space in the loose rock to settle her newfound possession where it would shine in the moonlight she was prepared to wait for.

She wondered how many more unrecognizable things were in the cave, settled in the cracks of the sea she never looked into. How many more careless humans dropped treasures for her to find and marvel over?

Ariel turned a slow circle and let her tail kick up the sand on the cave bottom. She tilted her head back and took a deep, watery breath. Then she smiled. She could definitely find space in the cave for anything she recovered.

Ariel giggled and turned a faster circle, disrupting the anemone. She didn’t know where she would start her search, but it didn’t matter. Humans covered more of the world than her father’s kingdom. There were countless places for her to start digging.


End file.
